NEW DELHI: The Centre routinely grants 7,000-8,000 permissions for interception and monitoring of citizens every month, an NGO alleged before the Delhi HC on Tuesday.
Questioning the rigour behind the grant of such permission, the organisation, citing an RTI reply, told the HC that the committee that reviews such permission sits only once every two months.
While it sought the HC’s immediate intervention to verify under what due diligence is such permission being granted every month, a bench comprising Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh didn’t go into the specifics but asked the Centre to file a detailed response on the law and process being followed in such cases. “Time to file a detailed affidavit is granted to the Union of India. Point out in detail the law and procedure followed for monitoring and interception of phones,” the bench said, while posting the matter for the end of this month.
It is hearing petitions alleging “generalised surveillance” of citizens by the authorities and seeks a permanent independent oversight body, judicial or parliamentary, for the issuing and reviewing of lawful interception and monitoring orders/warrants under the enabling provisions of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, and the Information Technology Act, 2000.
The petitions allege that citizens’ right to privacy is being “endangered” by surveillance programmes such as the Centralised Monitoring System (CMS), Network Traffic Analysis (Netra) and National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid).
The plea by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation and the Software Freedom Law Centre contends that these surveillance systems allow central and state law enforcement agencies to intercept and monitor all telecommunications in bulk, which is an infringement on an individual’s fundamental right to privacy.
Appearing for the NGOs, advocate Prashant Bhushan urged the court to intervene, pointing out that the government has admitted it places 7,000-8,000 interception requests every month with the committee, and that these are cleared. However, solicitor general Tushar Mehta asserted that all monitoring activities were being carried out as per law, and with requisite permissions, and opposed such “bald statements”. “This is not a public interest issue. Whatever we find to be significant (in the petition), we will reply. Other things we will ignore,” he told the court, seeking time to file the document.
In an earlier reply, the Centre said no blanket permission was granted to any agency for the interception or monitoring or decryption of any message or information under the three surveillance programmes — CMS, Netra and Natgrid.
The two societies have contended that under the existing legal framework there is an “insufficient oversight mechanism” to authorise and review interception and monitoring orders issued by state agencies. The petition has claimed that Netra is “essentially a massive dragnet surveillance system designed specifically to monitor the nation’s Internet networks, including voice-over-internet traffic passing through software programmes such as ‘Skype’ or ‘Google Talk’, besides write-ups in tweets, status updates, emails, instant messaging transcripts, Internet calls, blogs and forums.”